Newell didn't rule out a Half-Life 3 game

Valve boss Gabe Newell took part in a brief Reddit “ask me anything” event yesterday, revealing what the company is currently working on. It seems that new video games from Valve are in development, the Half/Life Portal movies are on their way, and the company has big plans for its Source 2 engine.

Newell confirmed that Valve is creating “fully-fledged single player games.” He also mentioned it is developing virtual reality titles and continues to work on the VR knuckles controller. On the same topic of games, he said there was a chance that a new title set in the shared Half-Life/Portal universe would one day become a reality. There was also a question about the Valve/JJ Abrams movies based on the games (“Yep. They’re coming), and the inevitable probing about Half-Life 3.

“The number 3 must not be said. Yes. I personally believe all unidentified anonymous sources on the Internet,” Newell joked, when asked about the rumor that Half-Life 3 has been canceled. So maybe we will one day see the long-awaited sequel after all.

Surprisingly, Newell believes Portal 2 is Valve’s best single-player game, though that’s mainly because of his involvement with the Half-Life series. “If you are involved in a game, everything ends up being a set of trade-offs. Anything in a game is a sacrifice of things not in the game. I just feel those more personally about Half-Life for a bunch of reasons. And Xen.”

Valve is placing a lot of focus on its Source 2 engine, which Newell said will continue to be used as “our primary game development environment.”

Aside from moving Dota 2 to the engine recently, we are are using it [Source 2] as the foundation of some unannounced products. We would like to have everyone working on games here at Valve to eventually be using the same engine. We also intend to continue to make the Source 2 engine work available to the broad developer community as we go, and to make it available free of charge.

Newell was pretty vague on the subject of another Left 4 Dead game. He talked about new Valve products coming about as a result of new technology, while adding that the franchise is “a good place for creating shared narratives.”

In typical fashion, Newell didn’t give much away – but then he never ruled anything out, either. You can read the full AMA right here.